Episode 47: The Doll + Lady and the Bomb + Riot

Weird. We Welcome to the Life and Times of Captain Barney Miller podcast. I'm your host Mike White. Joining me, of course, is the rookie mister Christashie. Can I float an idea here?

Because we talked about all the time the Simpsons predicting the future? Okay, and in an episode of Barney Miller that we're about to talk about, not only does Dietrich more or less predict exactly how the Challenger is going to explode. He doesn't say that the Challenger is going to explode, but he does say be careful for those heating tiles falling off of a space shuttle. I'd like to enter into the court documents that Barney Miller predicted the Challenger and Arthur Dietrich maybe to blame. Now.

I thought that the Challenger blew up because of a faulty oh ring. Oh no, you're right. It's not the Challenger, it's the It was the one that uh exploded over Texas, right, Yes, Discovery Colombia, Colombia. Uh boy, I heard it was one of Baba Mooie's teeth. Yeah.

It was so minor compared to the other one, Like it just seemed to happen, and I didn't see the footage a thousand times, probably because there wasn't footage. There was like, yeah, there's that was the thing I remember because it happened. Happened when I was in high school, and it was probably like hour or two from where we live, like cause it was in like the North Texas area. I remember when it happened. But yeah, we're bombarded with footage of it over and over again.

But a little weird that he's like, Oh, those those heating tiles, if they ever come loose, It's like, holy shit, what the fuck is going on? Arthur Dietrich. He he's an alien from the future. You're the a d trick h the ad trick. On this episode, we are talking about three episodes of the original Barney Miller show.

We are going all the way back to season seven as we continue to trudge through season seven. We're talking about The Doll, which originally aired March twenty sixth, nineteen eighty one, just like two weeks before the Space Shuttle took off the very first time, Lady and the Bomb, which aired April ninth, nineteen eighty one, and Riot, also very prescient episode aired April thirtieth, nineteen eighty one. Chris, what did you think of the doll? I thought it was I thought it was interesting that in the precinct they were using kid gloves on this woman. It was very weird to me.

D Croxton, as Christine Lawson is is she's an interesting character because we don't we don't always get these kinds of characters. We were and we're gonna talk about, you know, paranoids with proof here pretty quick, especially a paranoid with actual proof in the next episode. But what's weird is in this episode I thought she was gonna say it was a dog at the beginning, Like I forgot what the name of the episode was for like a moment long enough because it was again like it was clear that the episode was withholding information because that was going to be the gag. And I actually like this episode a fair amount. I think that it's I think it's a pretty funny episode.

I laughed out loud a couple times. Actually, But I will say for me and Richard had him if you're listening, and I know you are, this might be this is the episode where I actually really like Levitt more than everybody else. And uh, they treat him like shit in this episode, which is really hard to see because he's trying to be sincere. I feel like most of the time, though, there is the one joke which they make a cute couple which I'm pretty sure was fucking ad lived because you can see how Lindon like losing it. He's back to camera and he's like he's corpsing really hard.

So I don't know if that was an ad lib line. James Gregory strikes me as the kind of guy who could pull that kind of ad lib off. But I like this episode What about You? Yeah, I had fun with this. This was nice.

This felt like a regular, regular, good, solid episode of Barney Miller. We've got some pretty good ab and C stories going on here. I really like. I believe his name is Oliver Clark, who plays the gentleman who has bought a ticket for the Space Shuttle, and it's so funny to hear them talking about commercial space travel, which kind of is happening, but kind of also you're rich enough, yes see, if you're fucking loaded, you could go for a joy ride in a spaceship. But you know, here we are, twenty twenty four.

We've got the what's it called, like the starlight or whatever, like oh starlink, yeah yeah, no, no, no, not the satellites. The Boeing oh oh, about to go up to the IS. I think it just got delayed. And I love how Dietrich is just ripping on this NASA guy like crazy about all the delays and things, because I mean, you remember the Challenger in Space Shuttle era. I remember that era, and it was always like, oh, they're going to launch the day.

Nope, scrubbed, no, no, nope, Oh there was a bird flew into the window. Scrubbed the mission just and the other day they're about the light that or send up this Boeing ship, which really does not fill me with confidence. Oh boy, really, wait, what happens in what happens in zero G? If the door plug comes out? You telling me that people seatbelts won't help them for being sucked down into space that time?

And I heard the story, Oh yeah, there was this noise going on, so they couldn't figure out where it was coming from, so they scrub the mission. I'm like, all right, all right, great, So I mean, same thing in nineteen eighty one as we're still doing here in twenty twenty four. And yeah, like you said, Dietrich talking about the heat tie, I mean that's hilarious. I mean we were talking about heat tiles before the big disaster. Like there was always this thing about like, oh, how many heat shields did it lose?

Or what the heat tiles on this and how do they work and all that, because it's it wasn't aerodynamic, It wasn't like the shuttles came in knows first. They came in bottom first, right, they could deflect all that heat off the bottom. And I just I think that's hilarious that we're still talking about these things. I mean, yeah, well, like I said, we'll get there when it comes to riot. But yeah, I like a lot of this.

I think it's very solid. I like the doll story, and I like that. You know, we complained about this a lot in our first one, two, three, four, five seasons. Maybe the lack of continuity between these episodes, this whole blood on the Bad story. I mean, that's the continuity for so much of the show, Now why isn't it?

And that's that for me is the crazy thing because in a lot of ways, well, I do agree with our dear friend Otto Bruno. I will say some of this season, I've appreciated it being different, which is and look, here's the thing, and I mean, you know this. I know this because we spend a lot of time watching a lot of stuff. When you change things, people get upset, and fans get upset, and fans want want their displeasure to be heard about the thing that they don't like or the way their thing that they love is being you know, rebooted, remade, or in this show's case, just continuing on season to season and again. Having read Auto's book and up up to the you know, season seven part of the book, and he talked about it when he was on our season, our show what two, three, four episodes ago?

Now how this is his least favorite season, and I can see why because it is very different. I'm not saying this is my favorite season of the show, far from it, but it's had some interesting episodes that are very atypical of Barney Miller. We're gonna be talking about one here pretty quick. This one is very typical. This is like, oh yeah, on the nose.

You can't get any more typical than this episode. You've got a ridiculous a plot and then the B and C plot are pretty straightforward. But for me, everything right now is all about Harris. That's where I'm interested. As as far as me being an engaged viewer of the show, Harris's plot line has dominated this season, which I have not disliked.

I'd like that a fair amount. Like I like Harris. I think he's probably my favorite character on the show. And also he's a Taurus, so there's that which doesn't surprise me. Literally, when he goes, tell me what your sign is?

I think it's in the next episode he goes, I'm a Taurus. I was like, a fucking of course, Well, of course it makes perfect sense. It makes perfect sense. As a Taurus myself, I get it, Like I understand Harris now more than ever because his character being written from that direction makes sense. But I love seeing him put through the paces in this season because they're really taking him to task.

I didn't know you've bought into astrology stuff. So what are all the signs of the other guys in the station? Can you predict that? I don't. I don't know.

That's the thing. I only know mine, And like the relationship between mine and what my wife says, which is scorpio. So I know that scorpios are like very like like, I don't know scorpios are I don't know. My wife's just always yeah sort of. So no, I don't buy into it, quote unquote, but but I have noticed things about myself that those things are true.

So and if you look at Harris, like the typical tourist traits, he exhibits them like in full, especially the stuff with his dress, which man in this episode, hey hey, Luke, it's is just I mean, the fact that he finally says it back to him is amazing that he gives him that, and then he's like, I don't like what you're wearing. Like but then they do the thing where he's like, I like what you're wearing. This time he's like, oh shit, maybe I should go change. I was kind of surprised they didn't do like the the gag of him like going to the bathroom to change because Luger said he liked his outfit. Luger is fucking amazing in this episode is so good, and like you said, the that potential ad lib towards the end there.

I love when he's hanging out in the back when they bring in the doll box, the box with the doll parts in it. It's the ransom note, and he's in the back and he doesn't know what the hell's going on, and then once he figures it out, it just gives like a big ah and goes into Barney's office and there's waiting for him in there. I love this tension to with Barney, this whole thing of him leaving all of his wealth to Barney when he passes off and Barnaby kind of running all of that. But at the same time, it's just like, you know, it's kind of like me and my mom right now, where she's like, oh when I die. When I die, I'm like, would you please enjoy yourself, go on some trips, do whatever makes you happy.

I'm not looking for any sort of inheritance. And like with Barney, you know, he has no blood ties to this man. I guess all of those Thanksgiving dinners are finally paying off Chris. She's two hundred and thirty five thousand dollars in our money. That's what nineteen eighty one funny money is probably like, oh my god, probably three quarters of a million dollars now, like so much money, and the fact that Luger's just like, oh, it's like two hundred and thirty five thousand dollars and you could see Barney just go what.

I love it. But also, on top of everything else, you're telling me, Okay, this is the thing I've always had a hard time kind of squaring away with Luger. He lives in a dingy apartment and cooks on a hot plates. It's ridiculous. I love it though, that he's just like this forever bachelor kind of like I guess, like a Walter Mathow from the Odd Couples type, like, you know, just a shmo of the highest order, you know, just like cooks on a hot plate, walks around in his underwear.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but in terms of the perception of him at home. I love Luger though he's I mean, he's not He hasn't been around enough this season. Thankfully in these three episodes he shows up two of the three times. Yeah, which is nice. Yeah.

I love the interplay between all the guys. I love the opening here when they're talking about, uh, dieterch came in lay because he was out late and uh, oh, you know he was out for seeing a film and then I love how lovit's like foreign film. No, it was a three stooges marathon, and then Levitt going, no, I like the ones with Shemp. Dietrick's response is, I feel like that's how people think you and I and people who do this are. We're just like we're gonna be super dismissive, like I have nothing else to say to you, and it's just like oh.

But then the fact that Dietrich gets him with it, he's like, come on, Shemp, but he's like, you're never gonna let me live that one down. It's like, yep, yeah, pretty much like you're right, Shemp. He's kind of the Shemp of the He's kind of the Shemp of the well one two in me Yeah, Well, and you were talking about how y'a like, now like this is the yeah kind of like you know Stormy Weather we just talked about a few episodes ago, which was a great levet episode. Notice too, that he's dressed very nice in this episode all of a moot. Yeah, and he's not wearing like a like herb tarlet type jacket, not wearing a lot ty.

He looks really sharp and and he's wearing dress clothes. He's not in uniform, which is so his goal. You know. I kind of like it feels almost like he's accepted. I kind of, oh my god, Richard is Richard's probably just laughing to himself listening to this, But I kind of wish that that would be the case at this point.

Yeah, because he's a welcome counterpoint, and I think he's a welcome counterpoint primarily to Dietrich. I think it's him and Dietrich playing off of one another because him and Barney, I mean, that's been well established, and I'm not saying that they haven't minded for all it's worth, but it kind of feels like they mind that part of their relationship over and over with the whole like why don't you bring me up here? Gag? And it's like, dude, like I can't, what do you want from me? So I like that he gets to play off of other people, and the other people that he plays off of I think are better suited comedically for what he's bringing to the show, which is, you know, Dietrich just looking down on him, Harris being annoyed by him, and wojoh, it's not having any idea what to do with him, and you know, barely in this episode, even though he's the one taking the statement by the end who lost her doll.

After that, he just kind of fades into the background a little bit, like, Yeah, it doesn't feel like this is definitely much more of a Harris and Levett episode with really good Dietrich touches. But yeah, like woa just just kind of in the back. I love when they recover the doll and the way that Barney's holding it like it's a real baby and he's like bouncing it and stuff, and the guy's like, can we get along with this now? Please? So good?

Yeah, And to your point about the blood and the badge stuff, I like that it's getting handled this season and they're not drawing it out. And I do like that because I didn't expect this to happen. I didn't expect I mean, we knew that the lawsuit thing happened because of the previous episode, but I didn't expect that they were going to like address it again and like have Barney and everybody going like checking in and then Barney gets subpoenut, which there's a payoff later we'll talk about, but that is fucking a how much because I mean, again, we talked about this before. Is it it was after the hair was it after the Harris incident? Or no, it was after they had to wear their like uniform day.

Yeah, yeah, and they they are no longer. I wouldn't say that they're not friends, but and I wouldn't say they're frenemies because I think that, first off, dumb fucking phrase. Secondly, they're not antagonistic towards each other, but they give each other a rather wide berth. Now you can see that when they're around each other, like they're not always interacting with each other because they're not meant to be friends anymore because Harris has kind of put himself before everybody else, which I mean you can see by the fact that he gets really bent out of shape when he's like, oh, they're subpoenating you, Barney, right, it's like, well, we can destroy your character on the stand, so so flippant about it.

Yeah, but that but that's Harris, right, And that's like Ron Glass's character of Harris. For me, he's one of the best written in like African American characters on TV at this time. He has to be because he's representing in a way that doesn't feel like they're having to stretch him being representation. He's well, he's well dressed, he speaks really well, and he knows that too. It's not like everybody else is telling him.

He knows and that's the thing that's important for me is that he knows that he can hang and bang with everybody. And Ron Glass is comic timing. When he's talking with the lawyers and he's asking why it's so expensive, He's like, oh, phone consultations this one bye yeah bye yeah, no, that little why is yeah? His comedic timing, Yeah, he really has some of the best comedic timing on the show. And he also can he also emotes really well too.

I love Ron Glass. I mean, look as someone who watched a lot of Firefly growing up, but I'm not a fan of that show, but I remember him in it and enjoying his character. This show really has been a treat to see a show with Ron Glass in it for eight, you know, eight seasons at this point. But I mean that's the case with everybody on the show's really great. It's just some people do kind of stand out a little bit more than others in certain seasons, because two or three seasons ago it was like Dietrick all the time, every time, baby, and now it's just he's he's faded into the back eat.

Oh yeah, and like season two, season three that those are fishes golden days, right. And one more thing about the whole astronaut thing. I love that Oliver Clark is an optometrist and that the NASA guy is like, oh, we've got a telescope that's supposed to go up, and I'm like, is that the Hubble telescope? Are they making references to the Hubble telescope all the way? Which kind of makes sense because I want to say that launched in like ninety eighty one, ninety two something like that, And I just remember there was a big you probably remember there's a big scandal about the Hubble when it went up because the telescope it didn't work right, right, and it was just this maj or another black eye for NASA, Like NASA gets all the black eyes.

They have the worst press, you know, they do, but then they fix it. They managed to fix this thing, and now it's like one of our most valuable resources when it comes to space exploration and taking photos of these incredible pictures. But yeah, it was so funny because I was like, oh, it was probably Oliver Clark working on that, right, And I assumed it was Hubble as well, like they were. They kind of alluded to it, and I guess it probably didn't have a name at that point. It was probably just like a long range telescope or something.

I'm assuming, Like then they gave it the name, but that's what I was assuming. I was like, oh, okay, that's kind of a nice little tie in, so I mentioned fish. Oh boy, I think you had a very similar reaction to Lady and the Bomb that I had. I was so surprised. So this Lady the Bomb starts off like a regular episode of Barney Miller.

We start with Harris on the phone and he's talking to his lawyers, and back to the blood on the bad stuff. We've got one of our most popular, well popular, one of our most prolific characters on here, well, actresses, Peggy Pope as the Doris Carlisle and Peggy Pope, we've talked about her many times before. I think I want to say she's been on here like six times or something. A lot to say the least, and she's great. I love her voice.

I mean, her voice is such her character just that kind of like flighty type thing that she does. It's a little Candy Azara type ries that she's got. And you know, we just start off here, you know, like some banter going on with these guys. We've got Levitt reading the horoscope to speaking of and to Harris with talking about the courts and everything. Avoid court.

I do love that he gets that in on him. Avoid Yeah, I I yeah, this, Oh my god. Okay, So now that you've opened the box, can I say how unnecessary Fish is in this episode and how I'm glad that he's gone from the show, because, uh, there we go spoilers. Fish is back. Yeah.

Fish just walks in the priest sect and I'm like, what on God's Green Earth is happening right now? We talked way back in season four, We're like, oh, he'll be back again, but it felt so far away, and it was so far away that I'd forgotten that he came back. So when he shows up, I was like, what, Oh my gosh. Yeah, I literally have said audibly, what the fuck? Use He just walks in, walks to the bathroom, and everybody just what the fuck?

Like, what the I mean? If they could say what the fuck, they would have because that is the one hundred percent appropriate response, because what I know why he's here. You know why he's here. He's here as a storytelling device. He is here as Dave's ex.

Fish is what it feels. I mean, it really is. Like the way the episode ends, it's like, oh, okay, I see now where this is going. But this is probably going to upset some fans of the show. But Fish has not been needed on this show in a very long time, and this episode shows why, because his style of comedy does not really work with anybody else's anymore.

It's it seems out of touch and out of sorts with where the Precinct has gone in the last four fucking years since he was on a single episode four years three and a half by the show's count. Well, the strangest thing is he apparely gives a reason for coming to the Precinct. Yes, not like oh I was in the neighborhood or I missed the old place. At first, I thought he was wandering back here like some most senile old man, just like, oh, well, this is where I always work. No, no, you you don't work here anymore.

Like I was expecting that. I was honestly expecting Fish to have lost his mind. Well, and that's and that's the thing you like you just mentioned. They don't really give a good reason. The reason that they give is like it's it's literally like canceled.

Yeah, Like, well, oh, my god, brother, when they when they address how the characters from that show were treated, my god, oh Vincent CASSISI is now in jail and the little girl who was like ten twelve maybe now has a child, Like wow, this is the darkest timeline Fish, what the fuck? Like it's and wasn't wasn't there there was like a small black child on the show, played by the famous child Todd Bridge. And where's he? He's a word of the state now, Like I I was put off by his appearance on this episode for a whole host of reasons. And it is ironic that him and Landesberg are talking about, you know, technology and being kept alive.

He outlived Landisburg, yeah, which is yeah, look a lot of these guys. Yeah, the only people he did not live is what Max Scale and Hal Lindon. Yeah literally, uh yeah, I I as crazy as it is, and I wouldn't even say welcome. As much of a novelty as it is for Fish to show up in this episode, he did not add enough to justify being here at all. They could have given that to any other character in the precinct, including but not limited to fucking Barney.

Could have talked about that, because because on top of everything else, this episode is essentially one long, ext extended erectile dysfunction joke. Hilarious. I mean, I don't know, is that like funny? Like I guess in a time before viagra, that was funny, right, It's always funny. It's always funny when men can perform, I guess.

So, like I'm not saying like I'm not saying like men's rights or anything, but just like it feels like such a what's the word low hanging fruit? Yes, yes, no, yeah, no, that was it. That is totally what it is. And it's funny though, because you know, you're talking about paranoids with proof and really Peggy Pope's character, she's and in the rate here like as far as her husband is working around dangerous right curials and when Wojo goes in here in there to see it's just like, yeah, it's everywhere, and it's all radioactive. It's like, and that's a problem that we, as far as I know, have never solved, which is we just continue to make radioactive waste and we continue to pollute our own planet with it and write a buriod as far as we possibly can, or dream about shooting it off into space and you know, hey, maybe uh maybe Elon can be our space garbage man.

Well he's already garbage, so he's two thirds of the way. They're a third of the way there. Uh. I do think it's funny because I mean, there aren't there like tons of caves in Tennessee and Kentucky where they just take all this shit and just dump it underground, like put it in barrels underground. It is wild to me to think that there was a time in this country when we were storing radioactive waste in cities underneath underneath buildings, in the possible it possibly leaching into the groundwater.

Like Yeah, it's I mean, again not surprising. I mean, obviously I'm not. You and I are a very different age, but you, I mean, like you were growing up around this time, so it's not like you were dialed into it. But the fact that this was like a thing is again shocking. I wouldn't say is the right word, but it's definitely just like, oh man, we have come a long way since nineteen eighty one.

There's that whole incident in Louisville, Kentucky. I think it was July third, nineteen eighty four. Oh here we go where that that barrel cracked open and prior to the entire town and was right next to a cemetery, and so all of those corpses came back. I mean, and that guy who's been in this uh in the series, man Don Kalfa, Yeah, Don Kalfa, he was there. He witnessed the whole thing.

Tryoxid I think that was what it was called, right, Yeah, you're right. Yeah, God boy, I hope somebody has no idea what we were talking about. And there's like what what I miss? Louisville, Kentucky was raised to the ground. Yeah yeah, don't you remember when Louisville, Kentucky was stronger?

Yeah, wiped off the face of the earth. Uh yeah, it's yeah, it's I mean again, like I say, I'm surprised, but given that this country and so many other countries are motivated at least policy making solely by the almighty dollar. It's not surprising. And then I do like that wo Jehowitz goes as far as to say, like what if they don't want our fucking garbage, dumb dumb, Like what what are you gonna do then? And it's like I'll figure it out and it's like, dunt dud, I'm dumb.

It's so funny that, you know, Max Scale plays boj as kind of adult a lot of times. It's a little slower, you know, little thick headed sometimes, but he is the social champion, you know, like I know this has gotten a bad rap over the but he is actual social justice warrior, like the way he takes on the government around all of these issues, and it's just like what are you doing? You know? And I love it. I love it.

And that's Max Scale, Like Max Scale is an actual, like social justice person. And then but he asked the like mask get behind wojahowits in this, which is great. Yeah, I was about to say, isn't all of this like social justice stuff is? Is Max Scale the person? Which look I respect immnsely, especially in an industry like Hollywood.

Where being that person willing to stand by your guns and give a shit about stuff and get you fired from things and let go from projects and even blacklisted. And you know, yeah, it's it's weird because it is kind of a cognitive dissonance in the character. It doesn't I'm not saying it, and you're not saying this either. I'm not saying it doesn't work. But there needs to be a bridge to that, and the show has never given us one.

I guess the closest the show's ever gotten is him being a Vietnam vet, Yeah, or an ex marine, I guess in talking about agent or so many of these things are pretty close to him, especially because he was a tool of the government for so many years when he was in the Marines, right, and now it's like, you know, he has had the skills have fallen from as eyes where he's just like, you know, when Dietrich's talking about protesting against the warriors, just like Paul I was in the war, and it's like, well, it was kind of an unjust warned I think it really took a lot for him to actually accept that and to accept Dietrich's opinion. Yeah, and and to your point, like Wojo has really been the voice of I want to say, the voice of the voiceless, but kind of he's been beating the drum.

I mean, other than sex workers, which he kind of has come around on though, it would seem and it seems like he definitely pays lot for the frequents them a lot, apparently hopefully's writing at that's why you can't date my daughter, right because you have sex with so many prostitutes. Like, oh, okay, Barney, are we making moral judgment calls here all of a sudden? God, Yeah, Thankfully there's none of that in this episode, none of the kind of the preachiness. But I do like that Wojehowitz stands up for what he believes in and calls out the government dickhead and tells the government dickhead like, this isn't okay, James Murtau, Ron Giles, government dickhead. It's great.

I guess he's not the government dickhead. He's the hospital dickhead. But he's working. He's essentially an extension of the government, at least in this episode's approximation. So well.

He I'm surprised it wasn't David Clements because He loves to show up as the government stooge or as like someone that thinks that they're like I love Guru or Jesus or somebody. I love that he can play either of those with no worries at all. Do you like the two old men in the cell playing chess? Though? I'm trying to remember how their story resolves, because I remember the resolution of Peggy Pope and her husband coming in and being slightly embarrassed by this stuff.

The hospital had guy coming in the last thing I remember from the the chess players was when the one guy kind of freaks out the other guy and says, Oh, that woman out there has a bomb. She could blow us all up. We don't have ten minutes. And the guy takes his hand off the piece, indicating that he's done with this move, and the guy's like oh, and then jumps right in. I don't remember what else happens with that, uh me either, I really made an impression.

Well that's the thing, like it's it's I think the gag is funny, but I don't think that they resolve it in the satisfying way, because the plotline that they have here is pretty high stakes, Like this woman has a pressure cooker bomb in the precinct and they don't know if it's going to go off. I just sped through the end of this episode. There is no resolution. That's their last line. Oh my god, that's what I thought, Like I was like, there isn't one right, No, I didn't.

I want to be wrong, because that's the worst thing to be on a podcast, to be wrong, so people can jump all over you. But that was my assumption because all I remember is, Oh, got your piece, and that's it, Like they just they were in there forever. Yeah, because Fish gets the bomb back. You know, Fish is always saving us from bombs. That feels like, oh, surprise, he didn't throw it into the safe.

Surprise, he didn't take it home and give it to Bernice exactly. God, now I have some takeout for Bernice. Yeah, like I oh god, talk about like talk about an old, tired, trite gag being run around the course one more time, like take this puffy up back and just put it down because it's not funny, Like no, take my wife, please, no, take my wife, Like Henny Youngman did it best able go to You're a core fac simile of that, and again like that that I'm not saying we don't need a curmudgeon in the precinct, far from it. But where the show has gone since he left is so different from where it was when he was here that he doesn't feel like a welcome cameo. He feels like a kind of a vestigial tail still just kind of hanging on a little bit.

It's like, just snip that thing off and be done with it, like there's no need. Yeah, so we got him kicking the bomb. We've got the government guy or sorry, the hospital guy, Woa Joe kind of laying into him. He goes away and the husband goes away, and then yeah, that's it. You know, we have a little d new mall with Fish leaving the precinct and that's it.

And another Bernice joke is how he ends said, and that's the last time he's on the show. Yeah, doesn't even come back for Landmark at the end. Which is that the most surprising part of this because it is for me, it is, Yeah, I would think he would come by one last time, But I wonder how you know. I know that Otto Bruno has written about this out that the relationship between Abe Vigoda and Damie Arnold and probably even know Pittlick not that good. I imagine, no, no, And that's whose fault is that, Abe, the Goda's fault period period the end.

Like, look, it's clear to me that everybody else could hang and bang with Nome Pitlick and Danny Arnold because everybody else has stayed on the show and been upgraded from guests to full time cast members, even in Steve Landsburg's case. And here's a Vagoda going and doing his own failed show and then cracking wise about it in this show like, hey, dude, guess what your show failed and you left this show bye, Like I don't know. I'm not saying I don't like a Pagoda. It's just his character of Fish at this point not a fan because it's just unwelcome. Well, it is funny that Dietrich does a remember Me Right, which is like, do you remember him in that original like side tilt, Well, there's the priest, but it was like he was in that potential spinoff episode with Fish when it was Bernie Senburn and their daughter, Oh, that's right, and it was like, oh, I want to learn from you.

I want to learn from the best, and it was like, Wow, this is setting up quite a relationship that never went anywhere, literally never went anywhere. No, and then when they have it here, it's like who cares? Like it's played for a gag, which is fine, I mean that's all it needed to be. But yeah, what a weird what a weird addition to this season. Tamp fish show up just out of the blue, and then we have to talk about riot, which do we have to?

It's so odd And now I understand, like, obviously we're looking at this from twenty twenty four lens, where there's a lot of protests happening right now on college campuses, there's a war happening or in Israel, in Palestine, and don't forget Ukraine. Yes, and we have this is apparently modeled on an incident that took place back in seventy eight when there was an Orthodox Jew that was killed over in Brooklyn. So there's that, and of course Jewish people have been persecuted for centuries, so there's a lot of stuff that this is built on. But to look back at this episode from where we sit right now is just a little bizarre for me, because this pretty much revolves around a riot that happens because a Hasidic Jew has been attacked on the Sabbath and one of their representatives comes to the precinct and it's just expressing he doesn't have anything other than just just a whole bunch of grief to lay at their feet and say this happened.

Where were you guys? And I didn't necessarily appreciate Wojo just jumping in there, going we don't work on Friday nights or something. I was like, whoaa, whoa, whoa. Yeah, like, gotta be a little nicer to this guy. But this turns into a really bad situation very quickly, and we have Luger to think for a lot of it.

Well, you're telling me that ascetic Jews probably don't enjoy having their faces being called into question by a non believer, by a gentile being told to shave y, just go home and take a shave, go Heaven, take a shave. Good God, Luger, No wonder you didn't want to go down there with me, barn, Yeah, right, like fuck, don't want to get lumped in with Luger. Uh, well he wants he was trying to get He was like, no, no, I'll go Okay, yeah, yeah, you stay here, you and your fucking megaphone, stay here. I don't meat you trying to make a bad thing worse, which he does. This episode is bizarre.

When that that U material comes flying through the front window and that has seen it sticks his head through the window, it looked like he was a space alien, Like I know, like and I'm not talking about the man's looks, his hair, his beard, his clothes, any of that stuff, just the way he looks in It's just this strange look on his face, just almost like because he has no expression. It's not like he's right and like oh I did that, or I'm proud of my work, or like what's in this room? He just like kind of leans in and sticks his head and I'm just like, what is this guy's deal? This is bizarre? Yeah, uh uh, this episode's a mess.

Yeah. I mean, the idea at the center of it, I think it's probably what Auto's talking about when we're talking about seasons of this show that don't work well. This might be one of those specific episodes because it is such a tonally inconsistent episode. And on top of that, not only is it tonally consistent, but the way it handles some of the stuff. I'm not saying it's problematic.

I frankly, I fucking hate that word. I would say it's more just tone deaf, but it's tone deaf. In nineteen eighty one, like the time of being tone deaf, was a very long time for entertainment. I mean, up until like the late nineties, there was very little openly gay characters on things that weren't being made fun of. This show included, frankly, so you know, if you're Jewish, if you're gay, if you're black, if you're Asian, if you're anything, representation is hard to come by in media.

And then when you have it be this, uh not great, really bizarre. Yeah, to your point, everything about this episode just it smacks of another show, smacks of a more serious show where people are actually invading the precinct, Like what the fuck? When did this all of them come all of a sudden become assault on Precinct thirteen? Like what the fuck is this? It's it's bizarre, And on top of everything else, it uses the crutchiest of crutches known to man in terms of storytelling, which is cut away and then cut back and everything's fucked up.

Right, It's like, oh, it already, it happened off screen. It's like, this is the one time that we've ever gotten to seasonthing like this and it's gonna happen off screen. Really show it's they make it almost feel like this is a commonplace thing. It's like this has never happened before. We've never had anybody storm the precinct like this.

Yeah, yeah, it's kind of upsetting. Yeah, I'm with you. Yeah, and especially yeah, and plus yes, you're absolutely right the oddity of cutting out of you go to commercial comeback and then they're telling stories about how Levitt was handcuffed to the jail cell. Hilarious. Yeah, teacher comes in and calls him Houdini, And I'm just like, this is strange.

I mean, yeah, this feels like it should have been on a very special episode. And it's that and I think they should have gone either darker or way lighter, And personally I would have actually preferred darker. I think. Well, and given that the riot happens because the guy gets beaten up, not killed, like if the original inciting incident was someone dying, then yeah, I would totally understand why this is the response. Frankly, but that's not what happens here.

This guy got shit beat out of him. I mean, you're telling me that there's a bigger response to this guy getting the shit beat out of him than an actual store owner being gunned down and shot in the fucking hit really really show. Okay, Yeah, had they said like, oh, we just got news from the hospital and this guy passed away right right to amp that up exactly exactly. No, and then on top of everything else, we have fucking preppers in this episode. It's like, do we need to have us constantly reminded of the real times we live in now?

By Barney Miller. A week and a couple of days after you know, the day I was born in eighty one, April twenty second, this is April thirtyth we're essentially, what like sixty years fifty sixty years removed from this, and it's like we're still talking about the shit today. Yeah, yeah, it's And what's so strange for me is that, you know, we talk about paranoids approof if we just talked about that in the last episode, and then here we have these guys. Preppers are the definition of paranoia, you know, that's their whole existence, and then that this riot breaks out and that it's Hasidic Jews and they're like, oh, we didn't expect it to be the Jews. I'm like, that is that's awful.

That is just awful. Again, at least they didn't say who they expected it to be, right exactly. Well, when they're telling that story about how the husband pretend to be a minority of his wife, and I'm just like, oh, man, motherfuckers are into race play. Oh yeah they are. I'm and they made the homeless guy.

Watch our Platt as the husband of the preppers. He is freaking amazing. Like, go on to his IMDb at some point and look at just the way his look changes through all these things. For me, he is primarily Officer Happy Hopkins, who is the of the two cops on Sanford and Son. There's one who's a brother and one who has absolutely no soul.

He is like the whitest white man of all times. He's the guy who says, you know, right off and then the black eyes sit on on you know, like that's his character. And he looks so different there. He was on a a really good episode of mash. He looked so different there when he first showed up, I thought he was Jerry from the Bob Newhart Show.

And then I was even more confused because there was a one of the stills on his IMDb is of the Bob Newhart Show. He was on there, But he is not Jerry. He's he's very much not. I believe it's Larry Gelman is or is it Peter No, Peter Boner's is sorry, is Jerry? So yeah, it's uh, he's amazing, He's terrific.

I wie, she was given a lot more to do. This role is very one note, and his wife is very one note as well. Yeah, and I actually like the I like the guy who comes in more the guy who owns the store, because he's the real piece of shit. Like, well, they told me they had a license. Driver's license counts right, yeah, oh yeah, right, we're bending the law a little bit.

It's like you sold him a gun, like ending the law. That's your definition, geez. I'd like to see what you think breaking the law is. They allude to using a grenade launcher, so that's probably what breaking of the law is in their mind. I like where Barney says, you know, if society's going out then I'm going out with it because the last thing I want to do is be around with people like you.

And it's just like mic drop. But then the guy gets him back pretty good. He's like, well, it'll be more for us than it's like also technically true, it's yeah, this is a very tonally inconsistent episode. And I also this is on a very special episode because this episode's not funny, Like it's not funny the way anything else has been in this show. It's just maybe forty years from now, when hopefully, if you're listening into the future, we're not dealing with these kind of conflicts anymore.

And by dealing with I mean hearing about it and being subjected to it, because again, we live in a pretty safe part of the world where we're not having to worry about it. I wonder if these things were going on now, how we would feel about this episode, because that's the other question, right, Like, imagine if we'd watched this episode two years ago, you've been like, we wouldn't have bat it in eye because it's just you know, again, it talked a little bit about some incursions and things, but yeah, and like, yeah, like I've known that net and Yahoo. Is that very nice by any means? But yeah, I didn't expect this. I didn't expect you know, the people that were genocided to genocide.

It's not genocide. It's just we're just making sure we're safe by making sure there's no one left. I mean, what do you do when there are other factions? You destroy all the other factions and then you're the only one left. That's what Fallout taught me so And that's a TV show made by Amazon Prime, so they've got their finger on the pulse or on the button however you want to look at it.

I don't want to drag this episode anymore than we already have, but this might be one of the worst episodes of the show in terms of execution and in terms of like the stories being both pretty off putting because there's a lot of parts in it. There's a lot of elements of each story beat or storyline that are really like owned deaf and weird and played for laughs. And it's not again like woke, problematic, whatever the fuck you want to call it. We've just come a long ways since nineteen eighty one, which is a good thing. Like, don't have to cancel this show nothing like that.

We just we know the times have changed. This show was made in a time and place where you could get away with this kind of storyline on a you know, over the air TV. Which is the craziest part. Really. I feel like they really mean this is going to sound weird because one of the things that Hasthitic Jews like is to be othered and to be separated.

But they feel very othered on this episode. They feel like, talking about that guy sticking his head in the door, it feels like they're being treated like aliens. One of the things that does that is that other than the one Rabbi, nobody is allowed to speak. Like they bring in this one guy Harris brings in get in here, rasputin okay, and push it right, and the right is they're looking at Bernie looking at Harris looking down, you know, fixing this coat. He doesn't get a line.

And I'm like, well, that's probably because they aren't going to pay all of these extras and they don't have SAG cards. This is fucked up, man, to just not have any of them speak, just have the one Jew that's allowed to talk other than Barney, right, Yeah, isn't it weird that they never even bring that up. Yeah. Also, yeah, like hey are like, I'm I am I am why I am not Hestic? I am Jewish?

Like right, you know yeah, and I know, like people are very different. I'm sure that there are Hasidic people that are just like yeah, that's cool. You know, there's different types of Jews, no problem. There are probably other Hesiitic Jews and other you know, reform et cetera, that are probably like, no, we are the real ones. Those are the fakes.

You know, they're basically less than dirt because they pretend to be Jewish and we are the real Jewish people. Yeah, man I, I hope we don't see another one of these episodes in the show because it's just it's a it's a drag. These episodes are a drag because it it's taking our characters and putting them on a path that is just not funny and it doesn't suit or serve them as characters. At all. Well we might, I mean, because the next three episodes that we're going to talk about, one is called Snuff, the other one is called Wojo's Rape, and the third one is called The Dog Killer.

So, oh my god, it's really going to get rough for the end of season seven The Dog Killer, Thank you. Yeah, I was speaking of topical issues. Jesus Christ. Yeah, wouldn't that be weird? All of a sudden, it's like, what this show is predicting the future?

We found it? Yeah, we knew it. Now we have we have proof Barney Miller was doing it. Yeah, you know for proof. Right.

For as strong as the first two episodes are, this third episode is definitely the lesser of the three by a substantial margin. Yeah, I'm hoping, because really I would consider that fish one to be sliding, but we like rounded third or sliding into home. And I hope these last three episodes are just you know, us eating a plate of dirt. In the next three episodes, we're going to talk about the vests, so I'm sure there's some bulletproof vests coming out the rain Maker and Liquidation as we wrap up season seven of Barney Miller the Show. And we don't wrap up, well, I guess we wrap up our season here on the life and times of Captain Barney Miller, and if all goes right, we will be joined by the aforementioned Otto Bruno.

As we talk about these last few episodes of this one before we plunge into season eight, though, Chris, we probably should take a little break and actually watch some Fish episodes. I do want to watch them. We're gonna finally do this, do people, I mean, do people want this? I don't know. Do we want it?

You're fucking right, we do, man. Should We're gonna just internet poles or something, or just fucking do it. I think we should just do it anyways, because I think we owe to this show to see how bad this show could have gotten. Should A Pagoda had stuck around for another couple seasons and we maybe like split up the season and just like one two three four or one one three five seven or something like that, watch all those episodes and just come back and do Fish in one episode and ever talk of this again. And I know, like the second season, someone was kind enough to send us information that we can get that off of like Canadian television or Canadian streaming site.

I don't know if I even want to go there. I'm I was so rare to go when we first started, and now I don't want to go in fish Town. Yeah, I'm with you, especially after this episode, Like I'm I think we probably owe it to our listeners to talk about a little fish. Maybe not the whole damn thing, but a couple episodes. We'll figure out what those episodes are.

But yeah, I've got to I've got to say, we need to we need to do the thing the right way, which is we got to pace nervous to a bad show that's spun off from a good show, which is so weird, right, Like, it's like, how sick forgetting Sarah Marshall has a sequel? Like a sort of sequel. It's like, did anybody remember that Get Me to the Greek or Get into the Greeks a fucking sequel? It's like, is anyone to remember that Fish was a spinoff of Barney Miller? Clearly not, because nobody watched it.

So yeah, I'm not looking forward to it, but I'm curious how. I'm curious the depth at which the show gets to in terms of quality. All right, all right, at least we've got a little time to get there one episode. Yeah, Well until then, Chris, what are you up to these days? Sir?

Everything that I'm up to is primarily of the audio variety, though I am doing a video thing now. Once a week, but you can find almost everything over at Weirdingwaymedia dot com other than the aforementioned video thing, which can be found on YouTube. Just search film Foundations and will be the only thing on there. But yeah, Weirdingway Media and Film Foundations on YouTube. What about you, Mike?

Also over at weirdingwaymedia dot com, or you can get all the stuff that I work as well, including the projection booth. We talked about Colombo once a month on The Shabby Detective. I think fans of Barney Miller probably also fans of Colombo. Feels like it would be a natural match. I don't know why.

Lots of cops Curmudgeony cops, though Curmudgeeny cops with Columbo are a little different than Curmudgeony cops on Barney Miller. Well, until we come back. Thank you everybody for listening, and thank you to John Walker for our theme music. And yeah, please go over to wherever you got this podcast, rate and review it. It would help us out as we plow into season seven, after we plow into season eight, as we finish up season seven and take a dive into Fishtown,